Learning From One Of The Best

Lorne Rubenstein

Lorne Rubenstein

STUART, Fla. — The PGA Merchandise Show was in Orlando last week, but I decided not to attend and I’m glad I didn’t. Had I gone I’d have missed the opportunity to shadow the legendary instructor Jimmy Ballard as he worked with former major league pitcher Jim Kaat.

Kitty, as he’s known, is 80 and I don’t know if I’ve met anybody more into the game and the swing. He’s in great shape, and he’s always keen to learn. One thing I know: He’s an example of the value of what a deep interest in golf can give a person. I’m lucky to call him a friend and to tee it up with him from time to time.

As it happens, Ballard had moved up from Key Largo recently after being based for 27 years at the Ocean Reef club there. Craig Dolch wrote a piece about Ballard that will fill you in on his fascinating backstory. Suffice it to say that I made sure to get up to the Champions Club at Summerfield here when Kitty told me he was going to work with Ballard. For one thing, I wanted to hear any stories about George Knudson that Ballard might have.

I was well aware that Ballard had a long and abiding respect for Knudson. Here’s a piece I wrote that touches on their connection — and I use the word “connection” not only because they were simpatico but because it’s the basis of Ballard’s teaching, and has been for years.

Ballard titled his book, published in 1990, How to Perfect Your Golf Swing: Using Connection and the Seven Common Denominators. Most students of the swing know he was instrumental in Curtis Strange winning the 1988 and 1989 U.S. Opens, and in Hal Sutton’s career, in which he won the 1983 PGA Championship and 14 PGA Tour events. He’s also worked with Jim Colbert for many years. Colbert, 77, won eight PGA Tour and 20 PGA Tour Champions events. Colbert also saw Ballard last week.

Knudson’s name came up while Ballard worked with Kitty. I asked him during a break what made Knudson such a precise ball-striker. Knudson, who died in 1989 at 51 of lung cancer, knew where the ball was going — and it’s no exaggeration to say he knew where it was going pretty much every time he set up to hit a shot.

“George understood what [Ben] Hogan did, and Hogan was the guy he basically copied,” Ballard replied. “He always had the club on plane and he always stood up to it (that is, he poured through the ball to a finish in which he was standing tall). The first time I saw George Knudson make a golf swing was in the late ‘60s, and I said then that’s the best golf swing on tour.”

That didn’t mean Knudson didn’t run into problems from time to time. Ballard told a story of when Knudson asked him for some help. He recalled this was during the old Pensacola Open (won twice by Arnold Palmer and Doug Sanders and once, in 1980, by Dan Halldorson, the Canadian Golf Hall of Famer who died in 2015).

Jimmy Ballard

“That was on a Friday,” Ballard said. “George told me he was just going to make the cut on the number and that he would be playing early on Saturday. He asked me to meet him after his round at the back of the driving range. I go down, and cars are parked there. I look around. Where’s George?”

A caddie told Ballard Knudson was between a couple of cars.

“When I walked up I see that he’s swinging flat,” Ballard said, demonstrating. “He was standing beside the passenger side of a car. I see this car has four dents. George makes a swing and hits the car again. He tells me he’d never have believed he was swinging flat. I said, George, you see it, right there, and the guy [who owns the car] is also going to see it. George takes it up here (now back on plane and more upright) and plays real good after that.”

Ballard went on to expound on the difference between feel and real. Every golfer knows what they are feeling is not necessarily what they are doing.

“I never met a guy from the tour, and I worked with over 300 of them, and I asked them, what do you think you’re doing? What do you feel like you’re doing? I never met one of them who got it right. Not one ever.”

With that Ballard went back to examining Kitty. He mentioned how similar the golf swing is to the swing a hitter uses in baseball. It’s lower, that’s all. Kitty, who spent 25 years trying to get hitters out — his record was an exceptional 283 wins against 237 losses — listened carefully. I recommend checking out a 2003 memoir that Kitty wrote about his time in the bigs and his continuing work as a broadcast analyst on telecasts, called Still Pitching: Musings from the Mound and the Microphone. He also wrote If These Walls Could Talk: Stories from the New York Yankees Dugout, Locker Room and Press Box, published in 2015.

Kitty was paying attention to Ballard, a wizard of the golf swing as he is a wizard of pitching. There was no place I’d rather have been than right there on the range, listening and learning to a couple of giants in their respective ball games. Connections indeed.